Mr. Twemlow, in his good-natured desire to make the best of it, remarks that there are pleasant lives abroad.
“Yes,” returns Mrs. Lammle, still sketching on the wall; “but I doubt whether billiard-playing, card-playing, and so forth, for the means to live under suspicion at a dirty table-d’hôte, is one of them.”
It is much for Mr. Lammle, Twemlow politely intimates (though greatly shocked), to have one always beside him who is attached to him in all his fortunes, and whose restraining influence will prevent him from courses that would be discreditable and ruinous. As he says it, Mrs. Lammle leaves off sketching, and looks at him.
“Restraining influence, Mr. Twemlow? We must eat and drink, and dress, and have a roof over our heads. Always beside him and attached in all his fortunes? Not much to boast of in that; what can a woman at my age do? My husband and I deceived one another when we married; we must bear the consequences of the deception—that is to say, bear one another, and bear the burden of scheming together for today’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast—till death divorces us.”
With those words, she walks out into Duke Street, Saint James’s. Mr. Twemlow returning to his sofa, lays down his aching head on its slippery little horsehair bolster, with a strong internal conviction that a painful interview is not the kind of thing to be taken after the dinner pills which are so highly salutary in connection with the pleasures of the table.
But, six o’clock in the evening finds the worthy little gentleman getting better, and also getting himself into his obsolete little silk stockings and pumps, for the wondering dinner at the Veneerings. And seven o’clock in the evening finds him trotting out into Duke Street, to trot to the corner and save a sixpence in coach-hire.
Tippins the divine has dined herself into such a condition by this time, that a morbid mind might desire her, for a blessed change, to sup at last, and turn into bed. Such a mind has Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, whom Twemlow finds contemplating Tippins with the moodiest of visages, while that playful creature rallies him on being so long overdue at the woolsack. Skittish is Tippins with Mortimer Lightwood too, and has raps to give him with her fan for having been best man at the nuptials of these deceiving what’s-their-names who have gone to pieces. Though, indeed, the fan is generally lively, and taps away at the men in all directions, with something of a grisly sound suggestive of the clattering of Lady Tippins’s bones.
A new race of intimate friends has sprung up at Veneering’s since he went into Parliament for the public good, to whom Mrs. Veneering is very attentive. These friends, like astronomical distances, are only to be spoken of in the very largest figures. Boots says that one of them is a contractor who (it has been calculated) gives employment, directly and indirectly, to five hundred thousand men. Brewer says that another of them is a chairman, in such request at so many boards, so far apart, that he never travels less by railway than three thousand miles a week. Buffer says that another of them hadn’t a sixpence eighteen months ago, and, through the brilliancy of his genius in getting those shares issued at eighty-five, and buying them all up with no money and selling them at par for cash, has now three hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds—Buffer particularly insisting on the odd seventy-five, and declining to take a farthing less. With Buffer, Boots, and Brewer, Lady Tippins is eminently facetious on the subject of these Fathers of the Scrip-Church: surveying them through her eyeglass, and inquiring whether Boots and Brewer and Buffer think they will make her fortune if she makes love to them? with other pleasantries of that nature. Veneering, in his different way, is much occupied with the Fathers too, piously retiring with them into the conservatory, from which retreat the word “Committee” is occasionally heard, and where the Fathers instruct Veneering how he must leave the valley of the piano on his left, take the level of the mantelpiece, cross by an open cutting at the candelabra, seize the carrying-traffic at the console, and cut up the opposition root and branch at the window curtains.
Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap are of the company, and the Fathers descry in Mrs. Podsnap a fine woman. She is consigned to a Father—Boots’s Father, who employs five hundred thousand men—and is brought to anchor on Veneering’s left; thus affording opportunity to the sportive Tippins on his right (he, as usual, being mere vacant space), to entreat to be told something about those loves of navvies, and whether they really do live on raw beefsteaks, and drink porter out of their barrows. But, in spite of such little skirmishes it is felt that this was to be a wondering dinner, and that the wondering must not be neglected. Accordingly, Brewer, as the man who has the greatest reputation to sustain, becomes the interpreter of the general instinct.
“I took,” says Brewer in a favourable pause, “a cab this morning, and I rattled off to that sale.”
Boots (devoured by envy) says, “So did I.”
Buffer says, “So did I”; but can find nobody to care whether he did or not.
“And what was it like?” inquires Veneering.
“I assure you,” replies Brewer, looking about for anybody else to address his answer to, and giving the preference to Lightwood; “I assure you, the things were going for a song. Handsome things enough, but fetching nothing.”
“So I heard this afternoon,” says Lightwood.
Brewer begs to know now, would it be fair to ask a professional man how—on—earth—these—people—ever—did—come—to—such—a—total smash? (Brewer’s divisions being for emphasis.)
Lightwood replies that he was consulted certainly, but could give no opinion which would pay off the Bill of Sale, and therefore violates no confidence in supposing that it came
